


Legends of the Bats

by AlmondRose



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Gen, they all have magic, this thing took me a million years to write holy cow, yay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7978774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondRose/pseuds/AlmondRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are legends about them. Legends dating back ages--to elves and witches and knights and kings and queens--legends that have faded. Because they weren’t together anymore. The groupe got disbanded. Legends were lost to time. And the group of twelve vanished to each other. They were gone.</p><p>and this is how they find each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legends of the Bats

**Author's Note:**

> bruce, dick, and babs are immortal because they took a sip from the Fountain of Youth. Alfred and Tim are elves. Steph and Jason were raised and became witches, making them immortal. Damian and Duke are shapeshifters, so they're immortal, too. Harper and Cullen are fairies, and Cass has a dragon's lifespan.

There are legends about them. Legends dating back ages--to elves and witches and knights and kings and queens--legends that have faded. Because they weren’t together anymore. The groupe got disbanded. Legends were lost to time. And the group of twelve vanished to each other. They were gone.

 

\-----

 

Bruce tries to leave Gotham. He tries and tries and can’t. Gotham is his home. He hasn’t seen any of the others in so long--he doesn’t know where they are, he can’t find them, do they even want to be found?

 

Bruce doesn’t know he doesn’t know he doesn’t know so he stays in Gotham, hiding in Wayne manor, which doesn’t actually belong to him, it belongs to a family, killed off ages ago. It belongs to the last Wayne, Thomas, who was a good friend to Bruce, was like his father. Bruce remembers, before Thomas died, he named his son after Bruce. 

 

Bruce Wayne, the real Bruce Wayne, died when he was fifteen. 

 

Bruce, the Bruce who isn’t Bruce Wayne, took his last name and house to honor his friend. 

 

Nobody knows he isn’t the real Bruce.

 

And that is probably why only one of the other eleven have found him. 

 

\-----

 

Alfred can’t leave Bruce. He’s been caring for him for longer than he cares to remember, and he can’t leave him, so he stays with him, in the stolen manor, while they wait. 

 

What they wait for, Alfred doesn’t know, just that they wait. 

 

\------

 

Richard pulls up a nickname--Dick--somewhere in the 1930’s--and keeps it. Dick travels the world, joins a circus, and hops trains in the dead of night, hoping to find her, hoping to find Bruce, hoping to find any of the others. 

 

(He knows Alfred is with Bruce. He’s sure Cullen is with Harper. Besides that--besides that, he has no idea.)

 

He never finds them, while he’s with circuses. He finds an alien princess, he finds a little boy he raises as his own, and mourns when he dies, he finds a vast array of redheads who are all too happy to flirt with a handsome acrobat, but he never finds his family.

 

\----

 

Barbara does it methodically. She changes her name, moves someplace new, gets a job, stays. A few years later, when she should have been aging, she moves again, changes her name, and gets a job. 

 

Due to modern medicine, she has a wheelchair, now. In some places she uses tech to help her walk. 

 

(She’s good at tech.)

 

She dyes her hair. She moves to a new place. She makes new friends. She keeps moving, keeps moving. 

 

(She doesn’t go back to Gotham.)

 

\-----

 

Jason is still technically in servitude to Ra’s al Gul. He still owes him. For fifty years, he waits at his court. He’s allowed to train there for ten years after. 

 

When he’s big, and buff, and hasn’t used magic besides as a weapon in seventy years, Ra’s tells him that there’s one last thing he must do to be free of his dept. 

 

Ra’s tells him what to do, and Jason does it. 

 

He goes out into the real world, back to Gotham, where things have advanced and progressed, and he doesn’t know where his family is (although he couldn’t tip them off), and he kills someone. A random victim Jason stalked for weeks before he chose him. The man was abusive, and a drunkard, and he raped someone, and Jason wasn’t  _ happy  _ about the bullet through his brain, but he wasn’t sad, either. 

 

Jason’s done half of his final task, and the rest of it comes into play quickly. 

 

He’s thrown in jail, and he can hear lunatics around him, and Jason’s free of his dept. And in jail. But free. 

 

A life sentence is nothing, not for him. 

 

\------

 

Tim isn’t exactly sure how his transition from a legendary elf, who helped in the great wars, who was one of the only ones who could ride on the great Cassandra’s dragons, to being a daycare supervisor happened. The years are blurry, although he knows he was mayor of Metropolis at one point, and at another he was  investigating strange meteor activity in Kansas. Now he’s dressed in oversize sweaters, tired all the time, and an expert at dealing with kids. 

 

(He remembers his panic with Damian, back in the day, and he wonders if it would be different, now.)

 

It doesn’t matter, because he lives in Star City (how did he get here) and he helps an old lady deal with fifteen kids ages 2-5 every day, and he goes home to his lonely apartment and his big, sad, dog, and he wonders if he knows where the others were, and if he just forgot.

 

\------

 

Stephanie has a bookstore she helps out at. She’s been there for a long time, and the pair of old ladies she works for doesn’t seem to mind that she doesn’t age. They also don’t mind the cat around her neck that’s also sometimes a bird, they also don’t mind when she wears fishnets and leather boots or a hoodie and jeans, and it’s a chill job, considering. 

 

She gets paid enough and she doesn’t have to work at a drugstore because she has no qualifications and she can rent out the apartment on top of the bakery and she gets free waffles, and people see her as odd but she doesn’t really care. 

 

(Screw them, she’s thousands of years old and has been raised back to life by a freakin’ necromancer and she was a knight at the Round Table and she’s kissed Cassandra of the dragons and she’s an actual witch, so everyone who has a single judgement for her can stick it where the sun don’t shine while she lives her happy life.)

 

\-----

 

Cass knows where everyone is, at least vaguely. She saw Dick about twenty years ago, and she knows Bruce is in Gotham, and she knows Steph works in a bookstore in either Central City or New York, and she knows Tim was mayor of Metropolis nearly fifty years ago, and she knows Jason is with Ra’s, and she knows Harper, Cullen, and Duke are still in Gotham. She supposes none of them know where she is. 

 

(She’s in a cave in the Himalayas, with two of her dragons.)

 

She doesn’t need food, and she hatched some dragon eggs about seventy years ago, and sometimes she goes down to the nearest village and buys a bunch of jewelry to entertain them, although gold has gotten more...lame, lately. Cass remembers vividly the old days, where treasure and money were piles of gold and jewels, not pieces of green paper.   

 

Neither of her dragons like the new money. Cass wonders if there’s any gold elsewhere in the world. 

 

Either way, she’s biding her time. She knows that when the others meet up, she’ll be able to  _ feel  _ it, like she can feel in her bones that it’s almost time. And way back when, when they all lost each other, she could feel that, too. 

 

She knows something will trigger their reunion. 

 

She’s just not sure what. 

 

\----

 

Damian is in the exact same place Stephanie is, just like he has been ever since she was risen from the dead, centuries ago. The dept Stephanie had to pay was to care for him, to watch over him. 

 

Damian was angry at Grandfather for imprisoning him with her, but she’s not terribly awful. And he likes the bookshop where she works. The crones she works for don’t mind him in bird or cat form, although he has yet to meet them in a human shape. 

 

Sometimes Damian gets restless. He wants to travel the world, leave New York. He tells Stephanie whenever the urge gets too bad. And she blinks at him, and doesn’t say anything, then the next day she takes him to the airport, and they board a plane, and they fly to nowhere and everywhere. 

 

They always come back. 

 

\----

 

Duke has long since given up on trying to lead a life as a human. He flits from house to house, as a stray dog, as a spoiled cat. He doesn’t stay in one place long, taking to the sky and flying away from Gotham. 

 

Whenever he flies as a bird (but never a bat), he tries to look for the others. Sometimes he searches a city from top to bottom. He’s never found them. Over the years they’ve gotten good at hiding. 

 

He goes back to Gotham every time he leaves, because he knows that eventually they’ll all return.

 

(You can’t just leave a city you helped found, that you became a family in, that you learned to love in.)

 

So Duke becomes a dog. He goes around neighborhoods with puppy dog eyes, and he gets taken in. He’ll leave in about ten years. He always feels bad, but he can’t age and they can’t get suspicious. It’s a cycle of guilt, but he’s biding his time. 

 

(Nothing ever seems real whenever they’re apart.)

 

\-----

 

Harper can literally create money out of thin air, so money’s not a problem. She could lounge around all day, but she gets so  _ bored.  _ So she gets jobs, jobs that don’t pay much, jobs that do pay much, jobs as a simple cash register, weird jobs like the “ghost shooer” of that eccentric billionare, jobs, jobs, jobs. 

 

If she doesn’t have jobs, she’ll  _ lose her mind.  _

 

She doesn’t really want to lose her mind. 

 

Harper hides her wings along her spine, dyes her hair normal colors sometimes, leaves it purple sometimes, and she tries to be normal.

 

(Dedicating her life to finding the others has occurred to her, as has going back to her roots and living in a forest, but. She doesn’t know the first place to look for the others, and fairies are a dying species. Harper doubts she’d get anything but depressed if she ever went back to that forest in Wales.)

 

And besides, Cullen likes humanity, and Harper doesn’t think people are that bad, all things considering.

 

(Fairies dying, why are they separated, does Cassandra have her dragons, is Alfred even alive, there were witch hunts, once, what if they come back--)

 

\-----

 

Cullen has gone to college exactly 34 times. Every time it’s for a new major that he’ll never use. But it’s fun. He goes to school, he dates cute boys, he pretends to be embarrassed by Harper, he dyes his hair brown, he tells elaborate stories about his “tattoo” of wings on his back to every person (man) that ever sees his shirt off. 

 

Sometimes it feels to him like Harper’s suspended in time, like she’s waiting. Well, he’s not. He’s moving on with life. 

 

(As much as he can.)

 

Cullen gets a new degree, he gets a new job, he goes to another pride parade, he watches movies, he pretends that he won’t have to reset in another few years. 

 

(Life, reset. Life, reset. Life, reset.)

  
It’s really annoying, having to reset, to change, to move, to get a new life, get a new degree, move on, on, on, never settle down. 

 

It’s annoying, to pretend to be real. 

 

(But he doesn’t know if he can avoid the act.)

 

\---------------

 

Babs starts to move in accordance to a certain pattern. She doesn’t even realize it until she notices she’s moved away from another city without even being there a year. 

 

She’s been following the heroes, that have been cropping up. The heroes that have extraordinary powers, that can do the impossible. 

 

Babs knows people that can do the impossible. She hasn’t seen it for years. 

 

Is magic coming back?

 

Is Superman a witch?

 

(no)

 

Is the Flash an elf?

 

(no)

 

Is Aquaman a nymph?

 

(no)

 

Babs shoves down her disappointment and interviews the next hero she finds. 

 

(none of them are Richard or Bruce or any of the others.)

 

((somehow she thought they might be))

  
  


\--------

 

Steph hears about this--this urban legend. 

 

“The what?” she asks, and she turns up the news. Carrie (one of the old ladies) squints at her. Lisa’s mostly deaf, so she doesn’t notice. Steph ignores them both and listens. 

 

“The Batman, a possible vigilante in Gotham City. Police assure us that he’s just an urban legend, but eyewitness accounts tell another story.” The reporter--something Vale--goes on to explain about a terrifying creature of the night, who’s half man, half bat, and Steph looks at the cat on her shoulder. 

 

Damian hisses. 

 

Steph stands up slowly. 

 

“I-I think,” she says loudly, and Carrie and Lisa turn to face her. “I think it’s time I retired.”

 

\-----

 

Duke is wandering around in cat form when he smells blood. He follows the scent, curious, and sees a pool of blood, gathering around a person. Duke balks, and hides in a corner. He looks up and sees the person responsible for the crime. 

 

Duke feels his hair go up in surprise, because one of them--He went by Peter last time Duke saw him--is holding a gun and standing around like he’s waiting. Peter (or whatever his name is now) is bigger now, more muscular, and he’s wearing a ninja outfit with a white streak in his hair, and Duke’s suddenly sure what’s going on. 

 

Because last time Duke saw him, Peter had just been risen from the dead. Ra’s had told him that the debt would be paid later. 

 

It’s later, Duke thinks, then he watches as the police come and take Peter in. Peter goes without any fuss, which is odd, especially if his favor to Ra’s was to kill this man. Ra’s probably didn’t want Peter to be caught. 

 

But caught Peter was, and he looked relieved as he went. Duke knew for a fact Peter could escape in about ten seconds if he wanted, but he didn’t seem to want. Duke followed the police car. 

 

He shifted into a cockroach, and he clung onto Peter’s pants and waited for him to go through all the mug shots and other jail stuff. When Peter’s finally shoved in a cell and the guards leave, Duke shifts back into himself. 

 

\-----

 

Haley’s Circus, the latest in Dick’s line of show-hopping, is in Gotham. Dick knows none of them will be at the circus. He also knows he can have tomorrow and the day after off, and then he can look for them then. 

 

(He has no clue weather anyone’s in Gotham, but it’d be a shame not to look around.)

 

Tonight is the opening night. Dick’s the opening act, actually, him and this nice couple named John and Mary Grayson. They let him into their show, and now he’s a part of the Flying Graysons.

 

He follows John and Mary to their positions, and he peers out at the crowd, trying to make out the muddled faces. 

 

“What are you looking for, son?” John asks. 

 

“Oh, um, my family lives in Gotham,” Dick lies quickly. “I thought they might be here.”

 

“I’m sure they want to support you,” Mary says. Dick shrugs and Haley announces them. A spotlight falls on their faces and they’re off. 

 

Dick loves acrobatics. He loves the feeling of flying, the feeling of soaring through the air, the ease in which he can move through the air. Way back when, when he was training to be a knight, his commander James, Berea’s father, had told him he was more suited for the court jester’s tricks than a knight. 

 

(Dick had laughed it off, had smiled up at him, and later became James’s successor and all but adopted by the mighty king Bruce and he’d been lorded and he remembers James on his deathbed, smiling at him and telling him he would have made an  _ excellent  _ court jester.)

 

Dick flies past the crowd, reaching for Mary’s hands, and he turns to look for a fragment of a second, and there seems to be a light on his face. Bruce is staring fixedly at Dick, like he can’t get enough of him, and Dick almost  _ almost  _ stumbles but he catches Mary’s hands and keeps going.

 

Not ten minutes later, the ropes snap and John and Mary fall to their deaths. Police surround him, and Dick feels sort of shocked, but he never knew them that well, and he’s craning his neck, standing on the tips of his toes, peering over the crowd. 

 

“That’s my son--let me through---”

 

“Mr Wayne, please--”

 

“Let me through-- he’s in shock--my son--” And Dick can’t really see him, not quite yet, but he yells, “Dad!” over the crowd. “Dad!”

 

“Richard--” Bruce says and the crowd seems to part, and Dick almost falls into his father’s arms, and they hug. 

 

“I’ve got you,” Bruce whispers into Dick’s hair. “I’ve got you.”

 

\----

 

Cass can feel it. Her dragons feel it too. She can tell they’re disturbed. She is getting agitated. She knows there are more in Gotham. She can  _ feel  _ it the core of her being, that her family is in the city she’s tied to, that they’ve returned. 

 

Maybe not all of them, but most. 

 

“Time to go,” she whispers to her dragons, and they hum in agreement. 

 

\----

 

Harper’s at her job as a cashier in a drug store. Some woman in her forties steps up and slaps down a magazine and cheap makeup, along with a Snickers bar. Harper scans the Snickers, and the makeup, and she picks up the magazine and falters at the cover. 

 

_ RECLUSIVE BILLIONAIRE BRUCE WAYNE TAKES IN RICHARD GRAYSON OF HALEY’S CIRCUS AFTER MYSTERIOUS DEATHS OF ACROBATS.  _

 

Which, okay, lots of people are named Bruce and Richard. But there’s a picture. A blurry picture, but a picture. 

 

“Um I don’t have all day!” the woman says, irritated. Harper scowls at her. 

 

“Geez,” she says, and she pointedly scans the magazine. She shoves it in a bag, holds it out, and snatches the woman’s credit card, scanning it viciously. The woman looks affronted and leaves quickly. Harper pulls out her phone and quickly types out a text to Cullen. 

 

_ Found B and R  _

 

\-----

 

Steph closes her eyes, enjoying the night air. She inhales and smiles. 

 

“There’s that Gotham scent we all know and love,” she says. Damian leaps down from her shoulder, twisting from a cat to a boy as he lands. 

 

“Stop being sentimental, Stephanie, and let’s get searching.” Steph grins and ruffles his hair. 

 

“Like you aren’t happy to be back,” she says and he crosses his arms. 

 

“No,” he says. “I’m not.” But he smiles, anyway. 

 

“Where do you want to look first?” Steph asks, leaning on his head. He shakes her off. 

 

“We could start in Crime Alley,” he says, frowning. “The Batman is sure to be there.”

 

“Good idea,” Steph says, then she hears a voice from below. 

 

“Stefan!” Steph turns quickly to the side of the roof. There’s a man in a blue and black costume, clutching two baton-things and grinning up at her. She recognizes him instantly, of course, despite his little mask. 

 

“Richard!” she yells, and then Damian’s at her side, and he gasps, then he’s a bird, a little robin, and he soars down the roof. Steph dissolves into shadows, and reappears at his side. 

 

Damian’s in boy form again, and he’s hugging Richard tightly. 

 

“Hey guys,” he says, his voice sounding strangled. Steph laughs and hugs him, too.

 

“Look at you two!” he says. “You’ve gotten old!”

 

“That’s a lie and you know it, Richard,” Steph says, sounding giddy to her own ears. If Richard’s here, in a funny outfit, then Bruce can’t be far behind. 

 

“Oh, I’m Nightwing now,” he says, posing. “No real names on the field.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Damian scoffs. Richard boops his nose, then leans in conspiratorially. 

 

“I go by Dick,” he says, then he straightens up. 

 

“Stephanie,” Steph says. 

 

“I figured as much,” Dick beams. “And what about you?”

 

“I am still--”

 

“Dami, D, Brat Prince,” Steph ticks off. 

 

“I am not!”

 

“How about Little D? Does that still stand?” Damian glares at Dick and blushes at the same time. 

 

“Maybe,” he says. And Steph remembers when she was a top knight (girls can’t be knights, they can’t-- _ well then I’ll be a boy _ \--), and she was Dick’s partner, and they journeyed together far and wide, and then later, she introduced Damian to them--and she has to wipe away a happy tear.

 

“I’m so glad to see you,” she says. 

 

“I am too,” Dick says, and he hugs her and Damian again. Then Steph hears footsteps land behind her, and she knows who it is, and she turns and hugs him. 

 

Bruce falters but pats her back, and she smiles into his chest. 

 

\----

 

Babs’s quest takes her to Gotham, which doesn’t surprise her. 

 

(Honestly, she wonders if the  _ Batman  _ thing was on purpose. Bruce and bats are like peanut butter and jelly.)

 

Babs takes time to do research, and three minutes later she’s discovered that Bruce has taken the place of a billionaire who died in a car crash. She knows the billionaire was named Bruce, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the other Bruce was named after her Bruce. 

 

So she takes another five minutes, a phone call, and a loss of fifty dollars and finds out the home number of Bruce Wayne. She dials it, feeling apprehensive. 

 

“Bruce Wayne’s phone, his butler speaking,” a familiar voice says, and Babs is flooded with relief. 

 

“Alfred,” she says, and the older man’s breath hitches. “It’s me, Berea.”

 

“Berea,” he says. “Where are you?”

 

“In a hotel downtown,” she says. “I just--just got here.”

 

“Do you have a car?”

 

“No,” she says. A car was too much hassle, what with her move-settle-move plan. 

 

“I’ll be right down, give me your address--”

 

“Who all’s there, Alfred?” Barbara asks. “Who all--besides you--”

 

“Bruce, Richard, Harper, Cullen, Stephanie, Damian,” he answers. Barbara could have sobbed with relief. Richard was  _ okay _ ! Of course she was worried about Peter, and Thomas, and Cassandra, and Timothy, but a huge weight was lifted off her chest and she smiles giddily into the phone. 

 

“That’s great,” she says honestly. She gives him her address. 

 

“I’ll be there soon, Berea” he says. 

 

“I’m looking forward to it,” she says. “And Alfred?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“It’s Barbara now.”

 

\-----

 

Cass follows the magnet in her chest, pulling her towards the rest of them--she’s not surprised they’re in a large house, far from everyone else. The house is far smaller than her castle or even Bruce’s, but she’s seen some pretty small  over the years. It seems bigger than average. 

 

She loves it instantly. She leaps off of Shiva (one of her dragons) and lands on her feet, taking off running towards the door. At the last second, the door is blown open and Harper runs out, her wings extended to help her glide. Cass throws her arms around her, and Harper kisses her, and Cass laughs into the kiss, then they’re being knocked over, and Stephanie is there, grinning giddily from the floor, and Cass tackles her into a hug as well, and then she can feel grass tickling her face, and she’s laughing and laughing, and Shiva and Cain (her other dragon) land and Shiva lets out a high pitched keen, a sort of victory song, and Cass hears windows open, and Richard yells, “CASS!” 

 

“YES!” she yells back, and Stephanie and Harper laugh again. Harper’s hand finds hers, and she laces their fingers together and squeezes. 

 

\-----

 

A dark shape stalks past Jason’s cell. He and Duke have been in there for a while, and although Jason’s been trying to convince Duke to leave, the other man won’t. 

 

Jason’s eyes follow the person stalking past, pushing a cuffed man in front of him. The dark person has a black cape surrounding him, and pointed ears, and an aura of….of fear. Jason inhales the fear-smell. It smells like Bruce. The man swirls past and Jason waits for him to come back by the cell. 

 

He doesn’t. 

 

Jason squints and mutters a spell. Suddenly there’s trails of light all around him, paths people have created. He narrows in on the one with the lingering fear-smell hanging over it. 

 

The aura looks like Bruce’s. 

 

It still smells like Bruce. 

 

It must be Bruce. 

 

“Duke,” Jason hisses. He hears a chittering and looks down. Duke’s in the shape of a mouse. He squeaks curiously. 

 

“Bruce was just in here,” Jason says. Duke chirps and his fur spikes up. Jason squats and picks him up, putting him into the pocket of his prison jumpsuit. Then Jason reaches, reaches,  _ reaches _ inside himself, and he gathers up energy, extra energy he’s learned to store inside him, and he releases it. 

 

And an entire section of Blackgate explodes. 

 

And Jason is free.

 

\-----

 

Damian is changing out of his Robin outfit after patrol when he feels it. Not much, just a slight shift from Stephanie’s direction. But she must be feeling it pretty strongly, if he can feel it at all. 

 

(They’ve developed a slight emotive link over the years being exposed to each other.)

 

He turns to face her. She’s frozen, her hands paused in taking off her boots. 

 

“Stephanie?” he asks. 

 

“He’s escaped,” she says. “He’s--he’s--”

 

“Who?” he asks. He has an inkling, though, because how many people could she sense? 

 

“He--Peter--no he doesn’t call himself that anymore--” She clutches at her head. 

 

“Should we go after him?” Damian asks, already starting to put his costume back on. She blinks and pushes her hair out of her ears. 

 

“Yeah,” she says, and she puts on her right boot and grabs her cape. “Let’s go.” 

 

Damian goes to her and she holds his hand and turns into shadows, muttering spells under her breath. Damian isn’t sure what they mean, but he likes the sound of them. He remembers when his mother would whisper spells to him and create patterns in the air for him to laugh at. It was long, long, ago, but the memory is fond. Stephanie’s hand clenches in his and they go in a different direction. 

 

Damian regains physical form and they’re outside of Blackgate, a place he has become familiar with in the past few weeks. But there’s a gaping hole in the side of the place, and there hadn’t been one there yesterday. 

 

“He was in  _ there? _ ” Damian asks. Steph nods, then her eyebrows fly up. 

 

“So was Thomas,” she says. “He was with him. In the same cell.”

 

“Where are they now?” he asks, wishing he had some sort of tracking spell.  

 

“I’m not sure,” she says. “The auras are too confusing. I’m out of practice.”

 

“Of course you are,” Damian mutters. She rolls her eyes. 

 

“I’m pretty sure they’re still near, though. We can split up to find them.” Damian nods.

 

“I’ll go this way,” he says. She agrees and goes the other way. Damian walks for about a minute before he senses something. He turns and squints suspiciously at the empty grass in front of him, his hand reaching for his sword. 

 

He pulls it out and holds it in front of him, then there’s a shimmer like a heat wave in the air and Peter steps out. A small animal leaps from his pocket and twists into Thomas. 

 

“Damian,” Peter says. Damian sheathes his sword. 

 

“You’re still alive,” he notes. 

 

“How did you know where we were?” Thomas asks. 

 

“Stephanie could sense that,” Damian says, pointing back at the ruined Blackgate. Thomas winces but Peter doesn’t look ashamed. 

 

“How many are you?” he asks. 

 

“We are only missing the elf,” Damian says, his tone making it clear that Timothy is not missed. Peter frowns at him and Thomas looks uncomfortable. “Why were you in jail?”

 

“Your grandfather’s a real friendly one,” Peter says. 

 

“Your dept?” Damian asks. He wonders what the necromancer made Peter do. He wonders why Stephanie’s was more of a punishment for Damian then for Stephanie. Peter nods. Damian doesn’t ask why Thomas was there with him. He hears panting from behind him then Stephanie’s running up to them, throwing her arms around Peter. He hugs her back, and Damian shifts uncomfortably while she switches to Thomas. 

 

“What do you call yourselves now?” she asks. “Berea is Barbara.”

 

“Jason.”

 

“Duke,” Thomas says. “Do you have any idea where Timothy is?”

 

“No,” Stephanie says. “Maybe you and I can find him together, Jason?” She sounds like she’s testing the new name. Damian suspects he will call him Peter forever, if not to just annoy him. 

 

\-----

 

Tim hears a knock. That’s odd, because he doesn’t really have any friends besides Mrs. Perkins, the daycare owner. He supposes it could be Mr. Anderson from across the hall, if he’d gotten locked out of his Netflix again, or it could be Dexter from next door, asking Tim to play videogames with him. 

 

Tim gets up, points at his coffee machine--he can hear it fill up, can feel it refill, and shuffles toward the door. He opens it without checking the keyhole, then he stops. There’s a guy there, a big guy, in a leather jacket and some sort of armor with a red bat stamped across it. He has black and white hair, with a red mask over his eyes and a helmet tucked under his arm. There’s a girl, in purple--eggplant--with a hood over her blonde hair, a mask over her mouth and blue eyes sparkling. A cat is frowning from her shoulder. There’s a man in blue and black, with stripes leading to his fingers and a domino mask over his eyes, twin batons--eskrima sticks--over his shoulders. And there’s another girl, in all black, with a yellow bat over her chest, and a pointy little mask, her short hair tied back. 

 

Tim gapes at them. 

 

The man in leather smirks. 

 

“Hey, Timbo,” Peter says. “We’re getting the band back together.” 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! hope you enjoyed!! comments/kudos are always welcome!


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